What’s New in Backup for Windows Home Server Vail?

By on April 29, 2010 in News, Windows Home Server, Windows Home Server Vail

The Home and Small Business Server Team continue their look at what’s new in Vail, with Microsoft’s Bodhi Deb exploring the area of backup. Over at Microsoft Forums, Bodhi gives an insight into the new backup features which have been introduced in Windows Home Server v2, including:

  • The ability to back-up your server
  • New client backup features including resumable backups, improved scheduling and support for VSS writers

Here’s the post in full:

Backing up client computers for file or folder or a full system restore was a feature introduced in Windows Home Server V1. Significant portion of the features and technology have been carried forward in the Vail product as well.

Backing up your server

Ability to backup the server and restore both data and the full system from a disaster was one of the #1 asks from our customers. In Vail we have provided ability to do automated backups of the full server to externally attached storage. Features include:

· Full VSS based backup of the server to externally attached disks using Windows Server 2008 R2 backup technology

· Ability to back up to multiple targets for offsite storage. You keep one external disk onsite for your most recent backups, and the other disks offsite in case of disasters

· You can back up the Operating System, Data, Shared Folders, and even the Client Backup Database for future recovery

· Select what you want to protect using the server backup configuration wizard on the Computers and Backup tab

· Schedule automatic backups multiple times a day upto half hour intervals

· Backups to external disks are incremental for storage optimization but each back up version is fully restorable

· Restore scenarios include restoring individual Files or Folders, Full system restore through Bare Metal Restore, and Factory Reset

Note: Not all features stated above have been fully developed in the product yet. For details about what is and is not available please refer to the Getting Started guide.

Backing up the client computers

Centralized backup of client computers to the Windows Home Server storage was a feature introduced in Windows Home Server V1. The basic technology and the features have been carried forward with some key feature updates.

Features from Windows Home Server V1

· Automatic daily backups of network joined client computers to centralized storage on Windows Home Server

· Backups are single instanced and incremental over the network. This provides storage and backup time optimizations. Only unique data and incremental changes across your home network are sent over the wire and stored only once.

· Ability to exclude files or folders from your backup

· Restore scenarios include individual Files or Folders and Full System Restore to similar hardware using Bare Metal Restore

New Features in “Vail”

· Support for VSS writers on client computers to improve consistency of backups

· New backup configuration wizard allows you to select volumes or folders you want to backup. Items that are not selected are excluded from the backup

· New Files or Folders restore Wizard provides a guided wizard for the user to restore individual files or folders from a backup

· New mini filter driver for the Files or Folders Restore wizard solves many of the problems in V1 resulting from multiple mount of backup volumes

· Intelligent automatic scheduling allows more computers to be backed up

Higher priority is given to computers with the oldest backups during the time window

Prioritization is calculated dynamically

Computers which are chronically out of compliance (such as laptops) are automatically backed outside of the backup time window whenever they are connected to the server

· Backups are now resummable. In WHS V1 if backups are not successfull, it started from the beginning the next time backups ran. This resulted in computers with high storage in repeated failed backups. In Vail we take checkpoints along the way (this is not visible to the end user). If for any reason backup fails in the middle such as due network connection drop, backups will resume from the last checkpoint next time it runs

· Full system restore functionality now allows automatic partition and formatting of drives during restore. In WHS V1 if volumes did not exist, users had to manually create partitions and format them before continuing with the system restore process. In Vail we do this automatically based on the configuration that existed in the source during a backup

· System restore disk now includes both the x86 (32 bit) and x64 bit version of the restore media. This allows you to restore both x86 and x64 bit client computers without the need to download and install specific 32 bit drivers for the restore CD

· Improved resiliency and robustness of the backup database including an improved database repair functionality

· Backup applet on the Client Launchpad allows users to start/stop manual backups as well as set the power management settings

Note: Not all features stated above have been fully developed in the product yet. For details about what is and is not available please refer to the Getting Started guide

More Info: Windows Home Server Vail Backup Deep Dive | WGS Vail Backup Forums | Microsoft Forums


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About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • GuustFlater

    Pretty disappointing not to see any improvement in the way a backup is done when a PC is active. I'm not doing backups during the night, as the PC's are not 100% silent and located in the kids rooms as well.

    Right now backup is taking 100% of the disk I/O and slows down the PC's too much. My laptop cannot be used for 10 minutes (of the 30 minutes that a backup takes), just because backup takes the highest priority.

    I really had hoped Vail would improve this, but I don't see this back in the feature list.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/urmaster urmaster

      That would be a local issue, I've not seen any problem like this from my clients.

    • ViRGE

      I’m not sure there’s a lot they can do to improve that. It’s not just a matter of priority, it’s the fact that doing a backup is an I/O limited activity in the first place, and it requires locking some files open to check their contents. Even with a low I/O priority the disk head is going to be flying all over the place and you’re going to get delayed reads and writes.

      What ultimately “solved” this for me was moving to an SSD. With the much faster random I/O (no disk head) and overall faster transfer rate, I no longer perceive any performance drop during a backup.

      • http://intensedebate.com/people/boggy4062 boggy4062

        Every time WHS runs on my 2.1GHz single core laptop it becomes unresponsive, sluggish. I learned to accept it, I just take my 10-20 minute break and that's it. However, my 4-core i7 desktop is so powerful that sometimes I don't even notice that the WHS backup is running I can be on Skype (no jitters at all), or view TV in my Media Center…. no problems, no hiccups…
        WHS backup is both disk and even more CPU intensive during the first 20-30% of the backup (lots of data comparison to de-dupe client disk blocks for the backup). I don't see any problem with this. Yes, SSD may be good for the WHS system disk (less noise for sure), but is it worth the expense? Maybe.

        • ViRGE

          Just so we’re clear, when I’m talking about a SSD, I’m talking about the client. The fast random I/O makes the backup process far less intrusive.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/boggy4062 boggy4062

      get a faster multi-core CPU. On my i7 I can talk on Skype and watch TV in the Media Center and don't even notice that the backup starts and runs its course. As far as timing …. nothing is stopping you to run it at noon or in late afternoon, It's all about planning and … money for better hardware.

  • GuustFlater

    Worst performance on my Dell Latitude D420 (less than 3 years old) having a Hitachi 1.8" PATA drive. On itself performance of the disk is not too bad. The dual 1.2 GHz Centrino core isn't a high performance one either.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/urmaster urmaster

    1.8 PATA could be the problem in itself, my set-ups are not exactly the best in the world but the worst being a standard 2.5" SATA runs fine.

  • MikeW

    I didn't see it mentioned, but my wish is the offsite backups I make are easily encrypted.
    I'd like to see the minifilter driver installed when the connector is installed too just so I don't have that crazy driver installation alert (+ Reboot windows) when restoring files!

  • DrewE

    I think that they should also support the FAT partitions.
    On my Win XP Home machine the main partition is FAT and the D: drive is also FAT.
    My kids have most of their games installed on this machine and I don't want to have to go through the hasel converting to NTFS and then trying to 'fix' the rights inability of Win XP Home so that everything works like it does now.
    It's not like Microsoft doesn't know anything about FAT partitions. They should be even easier to backup being as there is less information per file than on NTFS
    And going from less to MORE shoudö be easy.
    Doing a restore should also be easy because there is not so much extra (none visible) that data that has to re-written.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/urmaster urmaster

      Are we talking FAT32 here? If so ok, but MS is trying to move forward not backward FAT has already been replaced by NTFS and ExFAT. Supporting versions older than 32 would be a waste of time considering all its limitations.

  • http://oliviachan3709.wikidot.com/ Katheryn Anzora

    I found your site via reddit thanks for the post. I will bookmark it for future reference. Thanks